ZLATAN - MILAN
ROARING LION
IS ZLATAN IBRAHIMOVIC’S RETURN TO MILAN A DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO RECAPTURE FORMER GLORIES,
OR A MUCH-NEEDED INJECTION OF LEADERSHIP TO A YOUNG TEAM? EMMET GATES TAKES A
CLOSER LOOK...
T
he prodigal son has returned home.
In case you’ve been sleeping under
a rock for the last few months,
a certain Zlatan Ibrahimovic has
re-joined Milan as a free agent. Zlatan’s
contract with LA Galaxy expired at the
conclusion of the season and left him
free to negotiate. Whilst he was linked
with moves to Everton, Napoli, and more
romantically, with Bologna to play under
friend Sinisa Mihajlovic, it always seemed
likely that he would go back to the city
he didn’t want to leave in the first place –
Milan.
Ibrahimovic left in 2012 under a cloud,
effectively compelled to accept a
transfer to Paris Saint-Germain once it
became clear Silvio Berlusconi couldn’t
afford to keep the Swede on the club’s
books any longer. Zlatan decamped to Paris
for a fee in the region of €16m, but with his
substantial wage packet off the Rossoneri
books.
Milan’s then director of sport Adriano
Galliani recently spoke of the fallout from
Ibra’s move to Ligue 1, and revealed that
the temperamental player fell out with himover the transfer. It was clear even then that
Ibrahimovic loved Milan. He had spent three
years in Italy’s fashion capital as a player for
Inter, and a further two with the Rossoneri- broken up by a single, volatile year in
Barcelona under Pep Guardiola in 2009-10.
Milan had saved Ibra from his Catalan hell
and brought him back to familiar environs
that summer. He repaid them with their
first Scudetto in seven years, and what
ultimately turned out to be their last piece
of major silverware to date.
Zlatan scored 56 goals in all competitions
across the two seasons at San Siro, forming
great partnerships with Robinho and
Antonio Cassano. For the first time in his
career, he’d morphed into the undisputed
leader at the club, a locker room sage
who wouldn’t put up with tardiness from
teammates. Ibrahimovic led by example,
and didn’t suffer fools.
And then he was gone. In retrospect, his
departure, along with Thiago Silva’s, to
PSG marked the end of the Berlusconi era
at Milan. Despite limping on for a further
five years before the former Italian Prime
Minister eventually sold the club, Berlusconi
could no longer justify spending large
quantities of money on what could be
described as a vanity project. The rules of
the game had changed. No longer could a
football club thrive under the ownership of
a single individual. An owner like Berlusconi,
once at the forefront of the game, was now
considered small fry.
On the pitch, Milan descended into a black
hole in the post-Ibra landscape. The club
would finish in the top three in 2012-13, but
haven’t been close since. They last played
Champions League football in 2014, when
they were taken apart by Diego Simeone’s
Atletico Madrid in the Round of 16, and
have regularly featured in the Europa
League without ever forging a deep run
in the competition. The club became a
laughing stock, with it a regular occurrence
to see pictures on social media of great
Milan sides of the past with the tagline:
‘Remember when Milan had this team?’
Fast forward seven-and-a-half years later,
and the 38-year-old icon has now returned
to perhaps the club he loved most in his
career. Can Ibrahimovic genuinely save the
club for a second time?
The signing of Ibrahimovic has divided
opinion amongst the Rossoneri support.
Some state that despite it being fairly
obvious that he isn’t the player of 2012, he
still has the charisma and the experience
to lead a team of what are essentially,
raw, inexperienced youngsters. Many in
this camp believe that his experience
is invaluable and he can guide players
like Rafael Leao, Franck Kessie, Hakan
Calhanoglu, Davide Calabria to develop,
that he can once again perform the role of
locker room leader.
On the other hand, there are those who
believe that Zlatan offers precious little on
the field of play at this stage in his career,
citing his lack of mobility following a major
knee injury in the 2016-17 season. There is
the belief that his arrival is nothing more
than the club harking back to a more
glorious past, when the idea of winning
trophies wasn’t concealed to history books.
These people do have evidence to back
up their theory, citing the cases of Andriy
FACT FILE
NAME: Zlatan Ibrahimovic
BORN: October 3, 1981 (Malmo, Sweden)
HT / WT: 1.95m / 95kg
POSITION: Striker
CLUB: MilanSEASON CLUB APPS GOALS
1999 Malmo 6 1
2000 Malmo 29 14
2001 Malmo 12 3
2001-02 Ajax 33 9
2002-03 Ajax 42 21
2003-04 Ajax 31 15
2004-05 Ajax 4 3
2004-05 Juventus 45 16
2005-06 Juventus 47 10
2006-07 Inter 36 15
2007-08 Inter 34 22
2008-09 Inter 47 29
2009-10 Barcelona 45 21
2010-11 Barcelona 1 1
2010-11 Milan 41 21
2011-12 Milan 44 35
2012-13 PSG 46 35
2013-14 PSG 46 41
2014-15 PSG 37 30
2015-16 PSG 51 50
2016-17 Man Utd 46 28
2017-18 Man Utd 7 1
2018 LA Galaxy 27 22
2019 LA Galaxy 31 31‘Milan^ saved
Zlatan^
Ibrahimovic
from^ his^
Barcelona
hell’